e2v Awarded Funds to Develop Novel III-V IR Sensors

Teledyne e2v has been awarded funding in two separate UK Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) competitions enabling the development of “Radiation-Hard Infrared Detectors for Space Applications” and novel detector materials addressing multiple wavebands or photon counting in the IR range.

The areas of development that funding has been awarded for are:

• III-V Barrier Diode Radiation-Hard Infrared Detectors for Space Applications
• 2-Colour T2SL Detector Technology – deep-dive investigation

InGaAs and InSb as well as other III-V compound semiconductor configurations as CMOS/ROIC designs and Type 2 Super Lattice (T2SL) has gained a lot of interest for IR detection applications. These devices are band-gap engineered by varying the composition and doping of the thin semiconductor layers.

With respect to T2SL detectors The artificial periodicity introduced by the multilayer structure produces super lattices. With type-1 super lattices, the electrons and holes are contained in the same layer. For type-2 super lattices, the electrons and holes are located in adjacent layers.